Unhook the Wagon

Unhook the Wagon

Late one night, Terry stopped outside the door to my sewing/computer/guest room.  He was not allowed to enter this particular room, because he can't help but damage things within his path.  Previously he disobeyed my demand that he not cross the threshold and knocked the door off the lower hinge.  On this particular evening, he waited in the hall, leaning his head into my domain.

"Can you help me?" he asked quietly, as though there was any question to my response.
"Yes, what do you need?"
"I need  you to..." he started, with the rest of the sentence undeciperable.
"What?"
"I need  you to..." he said again, with, once again, the remainder of the sentence trailing off into softness and blur.
"What do you need?"
"I need you to..." he repeated, with the same incomprehensible ending.
With that, I got up from my desk chair, crossed the room, and bent down to hear his request.
"I need you to..." he said again.
"Sweetheart, take a breath and break up your sentence.  I can't understand you."  Standardly, if he didn't follow the speech therapist's instructions to take two deep breaths, break his sentence into three or four word groups, and over-enunciate his words, his speech quickly trailed into soft babble.
He took two breaths.  "I need you," he said, paused, and took a breath, "to unhook the wagon."
"The wagon?  What wagon?"
"The wagon behind my chair."

I leaned over to inspect the back of his chair to see if some small thing was being dragged along.  I couldn't fathom what wagon he could be talking about.  A toy?  We didn't have children.  Where would he get a wagon I wondered.
"Honey, what wagon?" I asked.
Very quietly and tentatively he said, "I think there's a wagon hooked onto the back of my chair."
With that, I smiled and chuckled.  I said softly, "Dear, I think you were sleeping.  There's no wagon behind your chair."
"Oh...," he paused, "I thought there was."  He gazed down at the floor, with a look of confusion and slight embarassment, as he tried to sort through the conflicting information.  I could see he was trying to meld this new information, that there was no wagon, with his thoughts moments earlier.
"I think you must have been dreaming."  I gave him a few seconds to ponder the possibility.  "What were you watching on tv?"
He sat for a moment.  "Oh, yeah," he said and gave a little laugh.  He had been watching a show about Alaska.  The people had been using a wagon.  He realized he had incorporated that incident into his dream.  When he awoke, he assumed he had a wagon, which he couldn't see from his vantage point, attached to the back of his electric wheelchair.
It was too funny!  We both laughed.  Over the next couple of days, we both made reference to the incident if he needed or couldn't find something... maybe it was in the wagon.

Move the Snow Plows

Spring 2015

At 4 a.m. Terry woke me.
Desperately sleepy and hoping his problem would be quick and easy, I asked, "What do you need?"
He said, "I need you to...", with the remainder of the sentence unintelligible.
"What?  I didn't catch that."
He repeated his "need" several times, before I was able to catch his words.
"I need you to do something about all these snowplows!"
"Snowplows?"
"Yes!  I need you to move the snowplows."
"What snowplows?"  I asked.
"The snowplows!  The snowplows!"

"Honey, we live in San Diego."
His face reflected both confusion and frustration.  "I know that!"  Normally Terry's voice is nearly at a whisper.  But, now, he was putting some real effort behind what he was saying, nearly shouting.  "You have to do something about the snowplows."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Move them!  Move them!"
"Sweetie, I think you're asleep or just waking up."
He looked at me for a few seconds, as though trying to comprehend what I just said, but went right back to his determinated goal.  "We have to do something about the snowplows.  It's going to be very expensive."
"Okay.  How many snowplows are there?"
This question seemed to calm him, as he thought about the number.  "A dozen or so,"  he eventually said.  "There's a lot of them."
"Where are they?"
"They're parked outside."
"Where?"
"On the street.  They have to be moved or they'll be towed."
"Are they broken down?"
"No."
"Then why would they be towed?"
"Because they don't have a permit."
"A permit?"
"Yes, they don't have a permit.  It will be very expensive, if they all get towed."
This is where I made a mistake.  I said, "Sweetie, there are no snowplows, because we live in San Diego."
Terry erupted.  "I know we live in San Diego.  Get the hell out of here!"
What I should have done was simply said, "Yes, Dear, I will move the snowplows," and left the room for a few minutes.

The next morning, while smiling, I gently asked Terry what he was thinking in the early morning.  He said he thought there were a bunch of snowplows that needed to be moved.  We figured out that he had been watching television shows about Alaska.  That's where the equipment came into his mind.  Then, we live in a college area, where every vehicle must have a permit and must be moved every three days or be towed.  That's where his urgency to move the snowplows originated.
I asked Terry why he was so upset.  He said he was frustrated that nobody would help him move the snowplows.  Apparently, in his mind, he had tried to get other people to help and they either wouldn't or couldn't.  He thought I could drive a snowplow.

At least he recognized my skill set.  ;)